"With astonishing facility, Kitty ignites the illusion of buzzing occupation, beguiling viewers while she blithely does absolutely nothing."

"Dust has settled on the once-shimmering pair. Museums close at the dawn of war, anxious that an attack might threaten their treasures. Kitty goes into storage while her husband is shipped to Europe. The dark unknowing frightens her and, for once, she is grateful to be childless. Her glaze fractures in the chill of crippling loneliness, and an irreparable craquelure spreads across her surface like grasping fingers. Bucky will not return, another brutal blow to Kitty’s structural integrity."

I am always intrigued by novels written in unexpected narrative forms (something this works great for me - other times not so much), but reading about this book I thought "my god! how clever!" Not to mention so nuanced, as women, especially of the time the main character resides in, were not much more than ornamentation in the lives of their parents and their husbands and society at large.

So, so clever. Beautifully written, and heartbreaking in its way. Perfectly happy for this be to my first finished book of the year. I'll be thinking about it for a long time. Bonus - I learned a bunch of new words not previously in my lexicon.